Donald Popham was born in Alvadore, Oregon. When he was three years old, his parents moved the family to Emmett, Idaho, where he was educated, graduating high school in 1935. Popham worked a number of different short-term jobs, including one in a gold mine, until he joined his brother in fulfilling a contract to cut wood on an Indian reservation around Chiloquin, Oregon. It took five months to finish the contract, after which he was once again seeking employment. His older brother recognized that aviation would be a booming industry because of the impending war, and encouraged Popham to sign up at a local sheet metal school. In early 1941, he had been training there for two weeks when the Boeing Corporation asked the school for 50 men to work in their Seattle, Washington plant. Before starting at Boeing he was given a list of the tools he would need to do his job. Popham's brother got the tools together and built a tool chest for him. Popham was assigned to Boeing's Plant #2 armament section, where he was hanging bomb racks and putting armor plating behind the pilot, co-pilot and navigators' seats. There were about 40,000 people working in the plant at the time. When he started, the plant was subcontracting for the Douglas Aircraft Company, manufacturing DB-7Bs [Annotator's Note: known as the A-20 Havoc in the US Army Air Forces, the DB-7B was a medium bomber, attack and reconnaissance aircraft referred to by the British as the Boston III] for use by the British in South Africa. After his plant finished 500 of those aircraft, they began work on the B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber]. A single man, Popham lived in a boarding house with several other Boeing employees until 26 September 1943 when he married a girl from Mississippi. At the time, he was building B-17s working 14 hours a day, month on end, and was lucky to get a Sunday off to get married. His wife went to work for Boeing as a "Rosie the Riveter," assembling wings for aircraft.

Donald Popham wanted to be out on the field so he put in his application for work on an engine crew. His five-months' seniority earned him a position on a field hydraulic truck. After another six months, he was promoted to the position he really wanted, pre-oiling and running Boeing engines. Popham said that by then Boeing was rolling out three planes a day. He remembered that after it had been in combat, the 500th B-17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] they had built was brought back to the plant. There was nothing left of the fuselage from navigator's position back, but it was still flying. Popham feels the B-17 was the greatest airplane ever built. He was eventually working on B-29s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber], a ship that was pressurized and highly desirable because it could fly so high and so long. He remembered it had a tunnel running through it from the bomb bay to the tail gunner, and they would use a cart like the ones mechanics use to work under cars to roll down that tunnel. He recalled going on a test flight to see how long it would take to get the plane off the ground when it was fully fueled. Initially it took about two miles to get it off the ground, but he said it was "some plane." He also remembered returning to Seattle on his motorcycle one Sunday, and witnessing a B-17 circling low and then plowing into the Frye Meat Packing Company's third story. The horrific explosion killed 26 people. Popham was the youngest of the four boys in his family. His oldest brother was a World War 1 pilot, and died holding the second oldest aircraft and engine license in the United States. The second son served in World War 2 as a carpenter on Kodiak Island, and was at Kiska when the Japanese bombed it. The third son was also a carpenter, who worked at a shipyard in West Portland. Popham was 24 years old when he went to work for Boeing.

On Sunday, 7 December 1941, Donald Popham was in a movie theater when the demand flashed on the screen for all military personnel to report to the nearest port of embarkation. Outside the theater, newsboys were selling papers with headlines all in red saying the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. From then on, Popham said, Boeing employees worked around the clock in three shifts. He worked swing shifts, from four in the afternoon until midnight, and stayed with the company until the Japanese surrendered in September 1945. At the start of the war Seattle was all white, but Boeing started bringing in black people by the trainloads to go to work at their plants. Popham had many friends working in the plant, and he remembers there being tight security when entering and leaving the plant. Popham said the advances in technology over the time he worked for Boeing were amazing.

After Donald Popham married and moved out of the boarding house, he found it difficult to find cigarettes because of the rationing. Through one of his wife's connections, they got contraband smokes, sugar and ham. The Navy, according to his source, was throwing surplus goods overboard, and it was easy to smuggle goods to the civilians. About the only recreation Popham and his wife had during the war was taking the ferry out to Bremerton, and watching the attendants open and close the protective nets along the harbor. They were not allowed to take pictures, but could see in the distance the ships that had come in to the Bremerton Navy yard for repairs. Some of the Boeing buildings were camouflaged, with dirt banked up the sides and fake houses and lawns obscuring the roofs. There were antiaircraft guns and guards protecting Boeing Field. When a new B-17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] came out of the plant, it was towed to a 50-foot revetment where they shot a burst out of every gun to make sure things were working. One night, Popham saw a utility trailer roll into a running engine, and tools spewed everywhere, prompting an inquest. Some people got fired.

Before he got married, Donald Popham tried to enlist, but failed the physical because of his eyesight. His rating was 4B, occupational, and he got numerous notices to go in and take the physical, but he was always rejected. Popham had little news about the war in Europe; while he was at work at Boeing, there were few opportunities to listen to the radio, and when he got home from work after midnight, he didn't want to wake his wife by listening to the day's broadcasts. But he read about the invasion of Normandy in the newspapers, and remembers that Americans were really tense about the operation because of the bad weather. After Pearl Harbor was attacked, he noted that the mood around the west coast was negatively affected by news of the Pacific war. Popham remembers hearing about PT boats [Annotator's Note: patrol torpedo boats], the kind President John F. Kennedy served on, and the damage that those "little rascals" could do. But Popham thinks that the B-17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] had more to do with the turning point of the war in Germany than any other thing, because of their success in destroying the enemy's industrial areas. He always wondered about the accuracy of the gunner in the nose of that plane. He remembers the Army and Navy having different requirements for the delivery of the Boeing aircraft. He liked working for Boeing, and thought well of his supervisors, but remarked that it was highly regimented and quota-driven work. Popham feels fortunate to have had the employment during the war years. Before he left, he was chief of his own crew on the field. Occasionally, at night, he would crawl up in the cockpit of a plane and listen to Tokyo Rose spreading negative propaganda for the Japanese. He thought the broadcasts were really stupid.

Donald Popham found it gratifying to know that he was playing a part in getting all those fine Boeing ships in the air. He remembers one glorious occasion when the Army took delivery of 50 B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] at one time, and flew them west toward Hawaii. They heard later that they were on the ground in the Philippines and the Japanese got them all. [Annotator's Note: Popham rubs his forehead.] Popham said everyone was impressed with the planes Boeing was building. Every plane that left the field had a test flight, and an engine crew was always present at takeoff. The pilots made careful notes on the aircraft's performance. There was no change in production at the Boeing plant as the war started winding down, and Popham said they were going "full blast" when the war ended. The Boeing employees all clapped when they heard the broadcast that the Enola Gay had dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. He said both he and his wife were about washed out from working non-stop for almost four years when McArthur [Annotator's Note: US Army General Douglas MacArthur] signed the surrender, and just a few days after that Popham left Boeing.

Although Donald Popham loved the mechanics of building planes, he did not stay in the aircraft industry after the war. He and his wife bought a car and drove to Mississippi to help her aging parents, and Popham went to work on engines at a Ford dealership. Later he opened a heating and air conditioning business, but the shortage of supplies after the war doomed it from the start. Finally he took a job as an engineer in a hospital in Mississippi and stayed there 30 years until he retired. His most vivid memory of the war years was walking out of the movie theater the day the attack on Pearl Harbor was announced. Popham said people were going crazy out in the streets. Another announcement that came as a shock was the report that President Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt] had died. Popham noted that there was a lot of skepticism about Truman [Annotator's Note: President Harry S. Truman], but he turned out to be one of the best American presidents. He remarked that the end of the war didn't stir up much of a commotion in Seattle.